Hungary’s Katinka Hosszu will leave the European Championships in Glasgow with just one medal, but it will be a gold. Hosszu fought off a surprising finish from Italy’s Ilaria Cusinato for her fifth-straight continental title in the 200 IM.
Hosszu touched in 2:10.17, a full four seconds off her world record (2:06.12) but plenty fast enough for gold. Cusinato swam a sterling time of 2:10.25 to take silver, and Switzerland’s Maria Ugolkova claimed bronze in 2:10.83.
The most surprising story of the race was Great Britain’s Siobhan-Marie O’Connor taking fourth in 2:10.85. O’Connor just missed bronze by two-hundredths, but she swam a full second slower than her semi-final time of 2:09.80. If she had merely repeated that mark in the final, she would have easily claimed gold.
France’s Fantine Lasaffre, the European champion in the 400 IM, took fifth in 2:11.71, followed by Turkey’s Viktoria Zeynep Gunes (2:12.17), Great Britain’s Aimee Willmott (2:13.13) and Hungary’s Zsuzsanna Jakobos (2:13.37).
